THE SAND PEBBLES AND BULLITT!

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Our next film duo is "THE SAND PEBBLES" (1966) nominated for 8 Academy Awards and the winner of 9 Golden Globes. Sadly, Steve McQueen got his only Academy Award (Best Actor) for this film. Director Robert Wise was working simultaneously on "The Sound of Music" with Julie Andrews at the time. Wise's first choice for the role of "Jake Holman" was Paul Newman. Co-stars included Richard Crenna, Richard Attenborough, a 19-year old Candice Bergen (who had not yet decided if she wanted to become an actress or a photographer) with music by Jerry Goldsmith. Director Wise was so proud of this film, that for years after it was made he held annual parties with surviving cast members to celebrate it. Note: This was the first film that Twentieth Century-Fox shot a movie using Panavision amamorphic lenses (which replaced Cinemascope). There is so much in this film that you never see anymore. Each character, for instance, is introduced on film in a unique way. McQueen carries his Navy bunk bag over his shoulder, hesitates atop a dock as he surveys the U.S. Navy gunboat San Pablo (an embarrassing left-over relic of the Spanish American War) pauses, smiles and makes his way down the gang-plank--pure McQueen. Richard Crenna is the boat's Commanding Officer Lieutenant Collins. The scene is China in the 1920's. Not to be missed: Where maverick loner McQueen, whose only love is engines, climbs down into the Engine Room and in a touching scene introduces himself aloud to the idle engine. This was, after all, a movie about a man and his relationship to the boat, who often finds himself embroiled in a conflict requiring a tough moral decision. As part of America's foreign policy, the boat patrols the Yangtze River, "showing the flag" to protect American missionaries and businessmen from bandits and warlords. There is an "Intermission" (a practice Hollywood did away with by the late 1960's in America). Along comes The Chinese Revolution and each individual on the boat is faced with baring naked--revelations about themselves and the agonizing decisions that follow. Few people knew that the book written by author Richard McKenna in 1962 (upon which this movie is based) spent 28 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List and was then serialized in The Saturday Evening Post. McKenna began writing in his 40's in Mountain Home, Idaho after many years in the Navy; he died of a heart attack in 1964. He was only 51 years old. The coupling of these two particular movies for this years "Festival" are as different as night and day. Filmed only two years apart, they are the subject of intense study by serious Actors worldwide.

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This Steve McQueen film will forever be associated with what became in Easter of 1968 one of the most dangerous car chases ever presented on the big screen. It remains unequaled. I open with this comment because as part of a multi-motion picture deal, McQueen's Solar Productions chose a complicated script that actor Robert Vaughn recalls sending back to McQueen "three or four times" with notes stapled to it stating, "This script makes no sense". Despite rewrites and the dedication of British Director Peter Yates to rework the script, Vaughn jokingly said in 2005 that the script "suddenly became increasingly clearer" to him as the price for his performance went up! The Plot involves McQueen as a San Francisco Detective named Frank Bullitt. All guts and no glitter, Bullitt and Don Gordon (a personal friend and frequent Co-Star of McQueen from his "Wanted Dead or Alive" TV series days) and two other cops are assigned to a rather simple assignment: to guard a witness named Johnny Ross for 48 hours before he provides testimony implicating the Mob the following Monday. Ross escapes to San Francisco from Chicago after stealing millions from Mob bosses. When the officers and the witness are killed, a ruthless politician with national aspirations in Washington named Walter Chalmers (Vaughn) is out to pin the blame on Bullitt, and the tension is thick. The vast majority of American audiences, truthfully, could not tell you what the plot was. This is due to the 10 minute car chase between McQueen driving a 1968 Mustang GT fastback chasing down the gunmen and the legendary stunt car driver Bill Hickman. Director Peter Yates called in top stunt driving coordinator Carey Loftin (who doubled for Steve along with Bud Ekins and Lorne Janes up until Steves death). Bill Hickman was already stunt driving for Walt Disney's original "The Love Bug" when Loftin got the call from Yates for a stunt man who could also look menacing as a killer. Loftin said "I have him sitting right here", and that's how Bill got the gig.

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Bill Hickman later drove for Gene Hackman in New York for "The French Connection", and for Roy Scheider in "The Seven Ups" in the 1970's. Bill was simply the best stunt driver in the U.S. Steve, indeed, did most of the driving with the exception of the dangerous airborne jumps and bone-jarring landings over seven hills along North Beach's Chestnut Avenue (and putting down the BMW motorcycle on the Canyon Highway)--both handled by Bud Ekins. Director Yates left one blown turn in the movie where Steve overshoots a side street, smokes the wheel wells in reverse with his head hanging out of the window, and goes after the killers. Hickman did his own driving through the chase in the 1968 Black Dodge Charger. Hickman in fact, worked for two weeks with McQueen (unknown to the producers) at the an abandoned landing strip to rehearse their stunt driving. The car chase was filmed over 22 city blocks reaching speeds of up to 130 miles per hour. A then-21 year old Jacqueline Bisset stars as McQueen's girlfriend. This is widely considered not only one of the best action flicks ever made, but as Director Lawrence Kasdan previously mentioned in an interview, every serious film actor to this day, studies how Steve got into and out of the car, how he walked, how he used his formidable facial expressions --all to humanize the counter-culture view of police officers who at the peak of the Vietnam War (when this film was made) were held in ill repute. The film won an Academy Award for "Best Film Editing". The Cast: Director: Peter Yates; Writers: Robert L. Fish (from the novel "Mute Witness"), Alan Trustman (screenplay); Harry Kleiner: (screenplay); Steve McQueen as Lt. Frank Bullitt; Robert Vaughn as Walter Chalmers; Jacqueline Bissett as Cathy; Don Gordon as Delgetti; Robert Duvall as the Cab Driver; Simon Oakland as Captain Sam Bennett and Norman Fell is Captain Baker. This film today is used in more television ads and is associated with "The King of Cool" probably more than any McQueen film we will feature. Two completely different films--one "Legend". Buckle in for this one!

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